given by the Apostle, in Hebrews, where he says, "Christ was made perfect by suffering;" and then he adds, "if we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him." In other words, there is no royal road to that throne; there is no path to it on which there is not a cross, and on which thorns are not growing. We must all through much tribulation, social or personal, pass to the kingdom of heaven. And Christ himself now occupies that throne, to keep it for us: "I go," he says, "to prepare a place for you; and I will come again, and receive you unto myself.”

we

And now, what is the way to have our hearts less set upon the world? It is to have them more set upon these promises. Read all the promises in succession, as addressed to each of the seven Churches; bind them all together, and you have the rest and the glory that remain for the people of God. Whatever may be specified in each of these eloquent promises, or whatever may be its minute, its material, and its distinguishing meaning, can say of them, each and all, they are "exceeding great." They are the first-fruits of that glorious harvest which shall be reaped by many a pilgrim who has sown in tears; they are the grand truths of God imprisoned in the formulas of human speech; the rays of which break through and give us some conceptions of the splendour that is yet before us. Bring together the whole of the promises given to the seven Churches, and they constitute the sparkling gems of our heavenly crown, and Christ is the focus in which all their splendour and their beauty are concentrated.

Stand then, my dear friends, by these bright hopes, animated and sustained by these pure and holy motives. In the language of the Apostle, "Let us run with patience the race that is set before us." If all the past in your experience is dark, the future is perfectly open, and it waits to be filled by you; what you make it, it will be by the grace of God. If the silent shadow of lost opportunities sits cold upon you; if the memory of rejected mercies and abused privileges drips upon your hearts like rain-drops from wintry branches; if all that you can think of in the past is melancholy, sad, oppressive; look forward the future is open, waiting for you to impress upon it what shall make it beautiful as prayer can desire, or full of calamity and curse as Satan can

wish it.

--

Turning, then, our backs upon the past, and seeking only absolution for it through the blood of Jesus- let us raise our faces to the future, and, looking to Jesus still, let us run the race that is set before us in the Gospel; for

"Life is real-life is earnest;

And the grave is not its close; "Dust thou art, to dust returnest,' Was not spoken of the soul.

"Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end and way;
But to see that each to-morrow,
Finds us further than to-day."

LECTURE XXXV.

THE LAST APPEAL.

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." -REV. iii. 22.

TO-NIGHT I give my closing Lecture on the epistles to the seven Churches of Asia. On this last verse I wish to make some closing practical remarks, though all have been meant to be practical, and I trust have been more or less applicable to you all. It appears that there were originally twelve churches in Asia, and not merely seven. The question has been asked again and again, How is it that John speaks of the existence of only seven, but is silent on the existence of the other five? Further, it has been very naturally asked, Why he writes to these seven not as to seven churches selected from the twelve, but as to the seven churches, as if they were the only existing churches in Asia? The other churches which are known to have existed in Asia, are the Church of Tralles, to which Ignatius, an uninspired, but early father, writes an epistle; the Church of Magnesia, to which he also writes; the Church of Miletus; the Church of Hierapolis; and the Church of Colosse, to which the Apostle Paul has written an epistle. Now the question is, Why does the Apostle select. seven out of the twelve, and leave Tralles, Magnesia, Hierapolis Miletus, and Colosse, without any epistle addressed to any of them? and, Why does he call seven that he selects not seven selected because pre-eminent, but THE SEVEN, as if these were the only existent churches in Asia? The following facts have been ascertained; and the discovery of these facts proves, if indeed it needs proof, that the Apocalypse was written at the date at which it assumes to have been written, i. e. about the year 96; and that

it was written by one who was placed in the circumstances in which John the Seer or the Evangelist was placed. We are perfectly convinced of all this on other grounds, but it is not unimportant to bring every incidental fact, to make appear to you more clear and obvious the great truth, that any or all of the books of the New Testament are not only given to us as they were written, but are authentic, and were written by the persons whose names they bear, and at the time and date, and under the circumstances now universally believed. Eusebius, an ancient Greek historian, in a work called his Xpovizov, which is a mere chronological summary of events and facts, and in no respect of a controversial character, states that three cities, Laodicea, Hierapolis and Colosse, were destroyed by an earthquake in Nero's reign; in other words, that these three cities were destroyed previous to the date at which John wrote the Apocalypse; but you will perceive among the three that are said to have been destroyed, he places Laodicea, to which John records an address or epistle; and you will be prepared to conclude, on hearing this, that my quotation proves too much, for it would prove that Laodicea must have been also non-existent at the date of the Apocalypse. John has recorded and recognised the existence of Laodicea, though Eusebius states that, in common with the other cities, it was destroyed by an earthquake.

An incidental extract is found in a heathen historian who hated Christianity, and called it "execrabilis superstitio"-"a hateful superstition," namely Tacitus, in which he makes the following statement: see Annals, book xiv., ch. 27: "This year (Nero 6th,) Laodicea, a famous city of Asia, having been destroyed by an earthquake, was rebuilt without any aid from us, (Rome,) and solely at its own expense." Now you see how clearly the reason comes out, why John should have written to Laodicea, but not to Hierapolis and Colosse. Tacitus says nothing of the two last; the presumption is, therefore, that their ruins lay as the earthquake left them; but he expressly states, without any reference to any religious question, or to anything in the Bible, that one city, Laodicea, was rebuilt. John found it rebuilt, and records an epistle to it. He found Colosse and Hierapolis in ruins, and, as a matter of course, there is no epistle to them. Now do you

see how beautifully Eusebius, the Christian annalist, not thinking of the Apocalypse at all, and Tacitus, the heathen infidel, who had no more idea of it than he had of Sir Isaac Newton's discoveries in astronomy, both accidentally, as the world would say, but as we know under the pressure of the Providence of God, relate a fact that shows, eighteen centuries afterward, why two cities were not addressed, namely, Hierapolis and Colosse, and why Laodicea which had suffered with them was addressed - this circumstance arising from its having been rebuilt, prior to John's writing the Apocalypse. So all that is written by man will yet attest the truth and grandeur of what is written by God.

ten.

I have now disposed of two cities, and reduced the number to The question is now, Why does John record epistles to seven, and leave Tralles, Magnesia, and Miletus, the remaining three, without any epistle addressed to them? Again, we have facts of a no less conclusive character, that throw light upon this. Miletus, it is evident by an existent epistle from Apollonius [Apollon. Tyan. Ep. 68,] to the Miletians, was also destroyed by an earthquake, and the Christians in it, as being, according to the popular superstition, the cause of the earthquake, were completely exterminated. This alone disposes of the Church of Miletus. As to those of Magnesia and Tralles, we have no evidence that there was a Christian Church in either of these places, previous to the date of the Apocalypse: but we have evidence that the Churches of Tralles and Magnesia existed after the date of the Apocalypse. We read of the existence of these churches, but we know just as clearly, from some allusions that I will specify, that they were founded after the date of the writing of the Apocalypse. Thus, for instance, a Bishop of Magnesia is addressed by Ignatius in his Epistle to that Church; and in that Epistle, which I perused only yesterday, I found allusions additional to those which Mr. Knight has cited in his able pamphlet, to which I am much indebted. I find that Ignatius writes to the Bishop of the Magnesians as having pavouévy vewτepixηv Tážev, [cap. iii. p. 179, Patr. Apost. Opera Tubinga, 1847,] a "conspicuously recent arrangement," or an "episcopate of very recent formation;" thus proving (as he probably wrote this some little time before A. D. 106, or later)